1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to assisting (e.g., advising and/or rescuing) persons in danger at a location, and more specifically to assisting persons (possibly impaired) when their danger is determined by one or more expert systems.
2. Description of the Prior Art
People at locations (e.g., buildings, tunnels, bridges, factories, refineries, recreational areas, such as parks, golf courses, ski slopes, public transportation vehicles, such as buses, subways, trains, planes, and ships, and other large structures) in emergency situations needlessly continue to suffer many thousands of deaths and injuries each year around the world. Although devices have been devised that alert people at a location by an alarm to an unsafe condition (e.g., fire, dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide, combustion gases such as carbon dioxide, and so forth), people have generally been forced to rely on their own judgment and trial-and-error efforts in determining what their safest course of action would be in their particular location. Such dangers, particularly in relatively large locations, such as large buildings (e.g., hotels, department stores, large office buildings, and equivalents), tunnels, bridges, factories, refineries, recreational areas (such as parks, golf courses, ski-slopes, and equivalents), or public transportation vehicles (such as buses, subways, trains, airplanes, ships, and equivalents), may require extremely prompt choices by the people in determining their safest course of action in such an emergency situation, such as a fire, explosion, violent attack, dangerous gas release, flooding, avalanche, lightning, hurricane, tornado, tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption, medical emergency, or other unexpected emergency. There may not be enough time for trial-and-error attempts by people to move to a safer location if their first choice of action turns out to be a mistake because of their limited knowledge of the relative levels of safety available at various areas of the location. Such mistakes are more likely to be fatal mistakes in relatively large locations, especially for visitors lacking thorough familiarity with the location (e.g., first-time hotel guests, department store shoppers, first-time or casual visitors, recreational visitors, customers, passengers, and so forth), especially when visibility is impaired by darkness, smoke, dust, power failures, structural failures, flooding, avalanche, and other causes, or when the person already has some impairment (acquired during the danger, or pre-existing before the danger arises) that limits their response to their situation.
U.S. Pat. App. No. 2007019422 published by Nathan, et al., on Aug. 23, 2007, discloses a method and system for a building warning system. The building safe warn generally related to warning or otherwise alerting people to hazards or other conditions in the building. The warnings may be generated as a function of the position of the person in the building and/or the location of a hazard so as to facilitate safely evacuating people from the building. The location of the people may be reported to emergency response entities to facilitate person discovery and rescue. The disclosures of this patent application are hereby incorporated by reference.
U.S. Pat. App. No. 20060036366 published by Kelly, et al., on Feb. 16, 2006, discloses a system and method for providing personalized storm warnings precisely tailored automatically for a particular individual or business user's geographic location of interest, which maybe provided automatically to the individual user or business. A detailed and accurate storm track, which includes information describing storm characteristics (severe weather conditions) as well as the current location and predicted track of movement of the storm, is generated. The storm track may be generated automatically from weather radar data, such as NEXRAD data, either alone, or in combination with local live weather radar information, to provide a more accurate storm track. The disclosures of this patent application are hereby incorporated by reference.
U.S. Pat. App. No. 20050125197 published by Duron, et al., on Jun. 9, 2005, discloses a system and method for detecting and monitoring structural damages which are irreversible and which lead to inevitable collapse of a building or location. The system includes at least one accelerometer that is housed in a device that is mounted on an exterior surface outside the burn area, and within the reach of the rescue worker. The device communicates with a remote display that provides visual and/or audible signals to indicate imminent collapse at the location. Additionally, the system includes collapse detecting analysis processes for determining the likelihood of collapse. The disclosures of this patent application are hereby incorporated by reference.
U.S. Pat. App. No. 20030036685 published by Goodman, on Feb. 20, 2003, discloses a physiological signal monitoring system comprising a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor, a processing device, and a Web site server for determining, displaying and analyzing various cardiovascular parameters. The system determines a plurality of cardiovascular indices including mean blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, respiratory rate, and arterial compliance on the basis of signal characteristics of the systolic wave pulse and the systolic reflected wave pulse present within the digital volume pulse derived from the PPG pulse contour. The system also provides for the accurate determination of systolic and diastolic blood pressure by using a non-invasive blood pressure monitor to calibrate the relationships between arterial or digital blood pressure and characteristics of the user's digital volume pulse contour. In this way, a wide variety of cardiovascular and respiratory data can be obtained. The disclosures of this patent application are hereby incorporated by reference.
U.S. Pat. App. No. 20010055544 published by Copp, et al., on Dec. 27, 2001, discloses an electromechanical device, a “detector arm.” It is useful for locating humans, either living or dead, who are trapped in a location such as a building that collapsed or was badly damaged in an earthquake, mudslide, bombing, or other disaster. This device includes an extendible mechanical arm that is equipped with a gas inlet device, a miniature video lens and light source, and preferably at least one microphone, all mounted at or near the “distal” end or tip of the detector arm. Various wires, cables, and a gas inlet hose are tied to or otherwise supported by the detector arm, allowing the wires and hose to be coupled to supporting devices, such as a video display, audio amplifier, and multi-component gas detector. The detector arm assembly is lightweight and portable, allowing a human operator to carry and maneuver it during a rescue or recovery operation inside a collapsed building or similar environment. The disclosures of this patent application are hereby incorporated by reference.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,018,641 issued to Lakshmanan, on Mar. 28, 2006, discloses a human being presence detection system that automatically determines the presence of human beings without directly attaching sensors to the human body and detects human drowsiness. The detection system characterizes the occupancy of a vehicle seat to determine the characteristics of deployment of vehicle airbags and restraints in the event of a crash/accident. The rescue of military personnel or of persons trapped under rubble, behind barriers, within a building, etc., is facilitated. In one embodiment, human beings are detected using data obtained from pressure transducers in the space of interest. The pressure signals are processed by a novel signal processing algorithm to determine the presence or absence of a human being, using information from different types of pressure transducers. The disclosures of this patent are hereby incorporated by reference.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,214,939 issued to Wong, et al., on May 8, 2007, discloses a fire detector and method for generating an alarm signal in response to a fire that uses an NDIR carbon dioxide sensor to generate an alarm signal when a signal processor receives the detector signal and a pre-selected criterion is met that is indicative of the onset of a fire based upon an analysis of the detector signal using a detection algorithm that relies upon a trending pattern of the detector signal, such as recognizing a substantial drop in the detector signal strength. The disclosures of this patent are hereby incorporated by reference.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,266,455 issued to Kahkoska, on Sep. 4, 2007, discloses a lightning detector system that monitors lightning strikes for a real-time detection and processing system. This invention provides a method of detecting and ranging lightning strikes using an inexpensive eight-bit processor with a single A/D channel and without floating point hardware. The disclosures of this patent are hereby incorporated by reference.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,251,515 issued to Cho, et al., on Jul. 31, 2007, discloses an apparatus for the measuring blood sugar levels non-invasively based on temperature measurements. Non-invasively measured blood sugar level values are obtained by a temperature measurement scheme are corrected by blood oxygen saturation and blood flow volume, thereby stabilizing the measurement data. The shape or color of control buttons for controlling the measurement are associated with the function of each button such that the buttons can be identified either visually or by touch. The disclosures of this patent are hereby incorporated by reference.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,320,030 issued to Brown on Jan. 15, 2008, discloses a remote health monitoring apparatus using scripted communications, e.g., generating a script program from a set of queries. The script program is executable by a remote apparatus that displays information and/or a set of queries to the individual through a user interface. Responses to the queries that are entered through the user interface together with individual identification information are sent from the remote apparatus to the server system across a communication network. The server system also includes an automated answering service for providing a series of questions from a stored set of questions for an individual at the remote apparatus to respond to, storing responses to each provided question in the series of questions and providing a service based on the individual's response to the questions. The disclosures of this patent are hereby incorporated by reference.
While many of the systems in the prior art cleverly and impressively attempt to alert people to dangers, such systems do not actively advise and rescue the people, depending on the condition at the location and any impairments of the people to be rescued. Furthermore, any one prior art system alone has a significant likelihood of incorrectly detecting danger when there is actually no danger (i.e., a false positive), or incorrectly missing danger when there is a real danger (i.e., a false negative). Furthermore, such prior art systems have not included means to assist (e.g., advise and/or rescue) a person who is impaired or who becomes impaired or trapped (e.g., from structural failure, fire, some type of violence, poisoning, explosions or other environmental compressions or decompressions, avalanche, lightning, hurricane, tornado, tsunami, flooding, earthquake, volcanic eruption, medical emergency, or any other dangerous event). What is needed is a system that overcomes these problems with a screening and selective testing approach to increase the probability of more quickly and correctly assisting people in danger. What is also needed is appropriate assistance when a person is already impaired at a location, either because of a pre-existing condition or as a result of a dangerous event.